[A]n English wit has well said that affectation displeases us because it has not too much, but too little, art. - Alice Meynell

This great immorality, centring in the irreproachable days of the Exhibition of 1851 or thereabouts—the pleasure in this particular form of human disgrace—has passed, leaving one trace only: the habit by which some men reproach a silly woman though her sex, whereas a silly man is not reproached through his sex.

Men in cities look upward not much more than animals, and these—except the dog when he bays the moon—look skyward not at all.

Round the blue sea I love the best The argent foam played, slender, fleet;
I saw—past Wordsworth and the rest— Her natural, Greek, and silver feet.